IB Docs (2) Team
Exposition
The exposition of a story is its starting point. The opening lines of a novel, the initial scene of a play or the opening shot of a movie all set the mood for the audience. You could say that authors manage the audience's expectations in the exposition from the first words.
There are a few questions on the mind of any audience when embarking on a new story. You can apply these questions to any work that you are reading for Parts 3 or 4. Below we offer answers to these questions in relation to Black Boy by Richard Wright. Exposition is one of many literary terms that you will want to become familiar with. Remember that the third learning outcome for Part 4 is an awareness of and ability to use such literary terms.
Remember: Exposition is only one part of a story. In order to learn more about how exposition relates to other parts of story telling, see our page on short stories in the section on text types.
5 questions on exposition
Here are five questions you can answer after reading the opening lines of a play, novel or short story. For each question, look for evidence from the passage to support your answer. You can apply these questions to any work that you are reading for Parts 3 or 4. The answers that appear here relate to the opening lines from Black Boy by Richard Wright.
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What kind of story is this going to be? To what literary genre might this work belong?
The narrator is retelling an important event from his youth. For this reason, the story could be a memoir. He starts with "One winter morning in the long-ago, four-year-old days of my life." Readers may or may not know about the author. The purpose of telling the story of is youth is to explain how events and people shaped him and helped him become a famous writer. He also tells his story with detail and dialogue. There are characters and descriptions, like you would expect in a novel, such as "shivering embers" and "quivering coals."
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Who will be the main characters?
The story is most likely going to be about the narrator and his family. The narrator is the main character and protagonist. His mother, whom he is afraid of, could be the antagonist. -
Is there a problem or conflict that has to be resolved? Predict how the plot will develop after these opening lines.
On a surface level, you could say the problem is Richard's boredom. This seems to drive him to accidentally set the house on fire. Having said this, there is a deeper struggle at hand between Richard and his mother. She cannot expect a four-year-old to play quietly and entertain himself. He is afraid of her and asks for negative attention. One could predict that Richard will accidentally burn down the house, but beyond this, it is difficult to say where the story will go from these initial lines. Most likely it will be about him growing up and experiencing more significant events in his life. -
Where is the story set? What do you know about this setting? How might the setting shape the story?
The story is set in Mississippi. It's the Deep South after World War I. Richard's house seems rather dreary and poor. His family is important, as the grandmother's health is central to the text. Poverty, racial issues and family stress are part of the backdrop that shape Richard. -
What is the narrator's relation to the story?
The narrator is the author. He is telling his own story from a later point in history, when he is older and wiser. We know this from the first words "long-ago." Although the story is his own, he does not tell us how to interpret it. It is an example of indirect narration, in other words, he shows us the action as it unfolds without bias.
Black Boy
Richard Wright
1937
One winter morning in the long-ago, four-year-old days of my life I found myself standing before a fireplace, warming my hands over a mound of glowing coals, listening to the wind whistle past the house outside. All morning my mother had been scolding me, telling me to keep still, warning me that I must make no noise. And I was angry, fretful, and impatient. In the next room Granny lay ill and under the day and night care of a doctor and I knew that I would be punished if I did not obey. I crossed restlessly to the window and pushed back the long fluffy white curtains – which I had been forbidden to touch – and looked yearningly out into the empty street. I was dreaming of running and playing and shouting, but the vivid image of Granny’s old, white, wrinkled, grim face, framed by a halo of tumbling black hair, lying upon a huge feather pillow, made me afraid.
The house was quiet. Behind me my brother – a year younger than I - was playing placidly upon the floor with a toy. A bird wheeled past the window and I greeted it with a glad shout.
‘You better hush,’ my brother said.
‘You shut up,’ I said.
‘My mother stepped briskly into the room and closed the door behind her. She came to me and shook her finger in my face.
‘You stop that yelling, you hear?” she whispered. ‘You know Granny’s sick and you better keep quiet!’
I hung my head and sulked. She left and I ached with boredom.
‘I told you so,’ my brother gloated.
‘You shut up,’ I told him again.
I wandered listlessly about the room. Trying to think of something to do, dreading the return of my mother, resentful of being neglected. The room held nothing of interest except the fire and finally I stood before the shimmering embers, fascinated by the quivering coals. An idea of a new kind of game grew and took root in my mind. Why not throw something into the fire and watch it burn? I looked about. There was only my picture book and my mother would beat me if I burned that. Then what? I hunted around until I saw the broom leaning in a closet. That’s it… Who would bother about a few straws if I burned them? I pulled out the broom and tore out a batch of straws and tossed them into the fire and watched them smoke, turn black, blaze, and finally become white wisps of ghosts that vanished. Burning straws was a teasing kind of fun and I took more of them from the broom and cast them into the fire. My brother came to my side, his eyes drawn by the blazing straws.
Towards assessment
Individual oral commentary - For your individual oral commentary, you will want to practice by holding in-class presentations on various passages from the works that you are reading for Part 4. Present the opening lines of a Part 4 work, by answering the five questions from this page on exposition.
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